Recently, interest in environmentally friendly cars has been increasing rapidly due to fossil fuel depletion and the greenhouse gas exhaust. Especially in eco-friendly cars, a travel distance of the electric vehicle has emerged as an important issue.
For heating and cooling, unlike an internal combustion engine, the electric vehicle typically has no waste heat source (engine coolant) for heating and no waste power for compressing a coolant. Accordingly, power for a PTC (positive temperature coefficient) heater and for compressing the coolant may be additionally required, and thus additional power may be consumed. As a result, the travel distance may be reduced by about 30 to 50%.
Accordingly, it is necessary to minimize outdoor air introduction in order to prevent temperature change. In this case, the concentration of carbon dioxide in a vehicle may be increased by carbon dioxide exhausted by passengers, and thus safety problems are generated. For example, 2,000 ppm or greater amount of carbon dioxide may cause drowsiness, and 5,000 ppm of carbon dioxide may cause a lapse into dyspnea.
Accordingly, studies to reduce the carbon dioxide in the vehicle have been conducted. Currently, an air filter (including activated carbon) has been applied to some high-end cars. However, this air filter can serve to remove harmful gasses such as volatile organic compounds (VOC) or fine dust, but it is difficult to remove carbon dioxide.
A conventional activated carbon manufacturing method has been used. For example, various vegetable materials such as coconut husks may be carbonized from precursors through a high temperature heat treatment under a non-activated environment, and temperature chemical or physical activation may be additionally performed thereon to have a large number of pores. However, according to this conventional method, surface pore sizes of the manufactured activated carbon may not be uniform such that a wide distribution range of micropores to macropores can be formed. As a result, pore uniformity may be decreased and forming ultra-micropores of one nanometer or less is difficult.
The foregoing is intended merely to aid in the understanding of the background of the present invention, and is not intended to mean that the present invention falls within the purview of the related art that is already known to those skilled in the art.